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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Early Days of Channel Führer
Early Days of Channel Führer
Lyrics
The snow is all around
Is all around
Like my hat like my hat
The snow is all around
Like my hat
It is also...
...white
And the man who brushes against me
In Heathrow
And the man who brushes against me
In beyond Vienna mit mir
Ist schrecklich (2)
(Where's all the choccies gone? Where's all the choccies gone?) (3)
No coffee for me
No room clearance for me
For
Der Meister is in Heathrow
S.T. rag (4)
My only pal is...
No coffee for me
For I am he
For I am he (5)
For no room clearance for me
For I am he
For I am he
(Fade out) (Shoo)
Notes
1. This is a melancholy song, and perhaps the Channel Führer (a pun on channel four?) is the narrator, although the song doesn't feel like one about "early days," with its wintry setting and often tentative vocals--it has a marked late days feeling. The narrator seems to be an Austrian in some sort of exile in England, or a vacation or business trip that feels like exile.
MES, in this video interview , uses "Channel Führer" as a joking title for television channels (like the History Channel) that constantly play World War Two documentaries (thanks to oldoak for tracking this down).
2. The man is beyond Vienna "with me, it's dreadful." MES sometimes mixes English with (sometimes bad) German ("Bremen Nacht," "Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain").
3. This line, which is shrieked quite frantically in the background of the track, is said to be uttered by Ben Pritchard. Perhaps MES (or the band, or a producer) thought the track needed a moment of comic relief. The effect that is being aimed for is not easily diagnosed, but if I had to say why this is here it may be because it conveys the narrator's alienation from his surroundings, as his sad meditation is punctured by cries bespeaking a more trivial and temporary trauma.
4. The Sporting Times? If so, that would put the action in the early days of the historical Fürher, since the British sports paper folded in 1932, the year before Hitler became Chancellor. And it could be the Sunday Times, as a British source I'll call "Dan" informs me.
But this may also refer to Steve Trafford. From Dave Simpson's book The Fallen:
"...In fact, like Dave Milner, [Steve Trafford] insists he and Smith actually became quite close and that Fall Heads Roll track "Early Days of Channel Fuhrer" originally included a lyric about 'my best friend, Steve' before Smith suddenly wiped it prior to release" (thanks to MandrakeAnthrax).
5. This may complete the thought "my only pal is..." which would indicate that the Führer is a regular Timmy No Mates, as the British are fond of saying. But I think it might just be stopping there en route back to "the man who brushes against me," which would make it a more encompassing statement of the narrator's sense of disconnection; the Pritchard line (see note 3 above) then would convey the incongruously jarring effect of the narrator hearing his own voice--not the one in his head that somberly intones the rest of the song, but the one responsible for the many uncontrollably public self-betrayals that strike an absurd and tinny chord in the midst of the Führer's wistful and slightly self-regarding dirge, just as Pritchard's cries do in MES's song.
Comments (20)
This makes me think of Good King Wenceslas, who the snow was all around (deep & crisp & even, if memory serves).
I also reckon he then says "like my HAT", not hands...as in "all around my hat", a folk hit of the seventies by Steeleye Span.
The word "white" is an overdub, I think "the man who brushes against me" is therefore repeated also.
For me it's a song about Hitler as a young man, down and out and cutting a sad figure trying to make it as an artist.
That explains the Vienna reference, and then the Meister reference ties in with Hitler's Wagner obsession, Der Meistersinger
"I actually thought that was a reference to George Tabori's play Mein Kampf, which is about Hitler's early days in Vienna, when he was living in a hostel for the homeless in Vienna while he was trying to start a career as a painter. At the beginning of the play, Hitler comes in and complains about the snow and getting no proper accommodation [see "no room clearance for me"]. The waltz tempo of the song also seemed to fit in the context."
The snow is all around (is all around)
Just like my hat (like my hat)
The snow is all around
Like my hat
It is also...
And the white brushes against me
In Heathrow
And the man who brushes against me
Is beyond Vienna (...)
Is shaggy
(Where's all the choccies gone? Where's all the choccies gone?)
No coffee for me
No room clearance for me
For...
Der meister is in Heathrow
S.T. ride
My only pal is...
No coffee for me
For I am he
For I am he
For no room clearance for me
For I am he
For I am he
(Whispered) Fade it out... shhh...
On MES's left is James Brown (later referred to as "J 'Loaded' Brown" on 'Alton Towers') and on his right is Justin Lee Collins who would later become much more famous as a TV personality and then hated as a wife-beating twat and bullyboy.
I'm pretty sure the line "my only pal is" was originally going to be "my only pal Steve", referring to bassist Steve Trafford, as he himself told Dave Simson in The Fallen. If you listen closely you can hear that the word "is" is clearly punched-in.
Trafford may have slightly misremembered the actual line.
The following verse (ignoring "white" from a different vocal track) appears to begin: "And the man who brushes against me /
In Heathrow / And the man who brushes against me...".
MES dabbles with German words and this one jumped out at me...
'Is beyond Vienna mit mir.
(Ist schreck krieg)'